Show HN: VS Code extension to edit the filesystem like a text buffer

[hexomancer]

This is a spiritual adaptation of oil.nvim for vscode. The main idea is you edit the filesystem by editing the current directory listing's text buffer. For example, if I want to rename a file, I just rename it in the listing file. This is extremely powerful because it translates all of your text-editing skills immediately into file editing capabilities.

Some features:

* Create/rename/move/delete files by editing the current directory listing's textbuffer

* Filter using glob pattern

* Trash and undo support

* Works even in remote-ssh workspaces

* Works across multiple vscode windows

[mprovost]

There's a long history of "directory editor" programs going back to (at least) 1974, which predates emacs. It's not surprising that there are many examples of convergent evolution.

https://invisible-island.net/ded/dating-dired.html

[hexomancer]

That's so cool, I was actually curious about history of such programs. Thanks for posting this :)

[lorenzohess]

See vimv (https://github.com/thameera/vimv) for a minimal version of this in the CLI, using Vim as the editor.

[mjw1007]

Also vidir, which is in the moreutils package in popular distros.

[turboponyy]

"Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power" - some Emacs user, probably

[hexomancer]

I don't use emacs so I may not be familiar with the full power, but if you are referring to dired, I think oil.nvim is much, much more powerful than dired.

The major difference being that you still need to learn some new keybinds for dired, for example, you can't just create a file by editing the text buffer whereas in oil.nvim (and by extension, voil) your text editing skills immediately apply.

[globular-toast]

You can switch to wdired and then edit the filenames etc. But true you can't create/delete files. Creating empty files is rarely useful or necessary, though, so not sure why you'd want that. Deleting files is more useful but that seems perfect in normal dired as you can see what you've marked rather than try to mentally keep track of lines you've already deleted.

[hexomancer]

> Creating empty files is rarely useful or necessary

I kind of disagree? Most files were once created as an empty file! (at least that's the case in my workflow).

[globular-toast]

The normal pattern, in Unix-like systems at least, is to just write to a non-existent file. There is very little reason to create an empty file first.

In Emacs I can even open a file in a non-existent directory and it will create all the containing directories when I try to save. So I rarely even use mkdir.

[ckolkey]

I've always just used `:e <filename>` - never saw the appeal of oil.nvim for that use case. But for other kinds of modifications it's nifty.

[whalesalad]

Was literally thinking the same thing. A colleague of mine basically used emacs as an operating system. Pretty sure he could get his to make buttered toast.

[heltale]

Some vim user too! oil.nvim is a pretty popular package that does this.

[hexomancer]

I obviously love oil.nvim and that's why I ported it to vscode. But I think in some ways voil is even more powerful than oil. Specifically:

- It can work across multiple vscode windows

- The top line (that shows the current directory) can be used to filter files. For example, if you add "*.{txt,md}" to the end of that line, it will only show the txt and markdown files.

- The ability to defined custom shell commands and bind keybindings to them. For example, I can create a command that zips selected files and run it with a single keybinding in voil.

- Undo functionality

[gschizas]

This looks cool, but I'm a bit wary of publishers that aren't verified.

> Do you trust the publisher "Ali Mostafavi"?

> The extension voil is published by Ali Mostafavi. This is the first extension > you're installing from this publisher.

> Ali Mostafavi is not verified.

> Visual Studio Code has no control over the behavior of third-party extensions, including how they manage your personal data. Proceed only if you trust the publisher.

[hexomancer]

You can view the source code and package the extension yourself if you are worried about that. It is only ~2000 LOC.

It is not easy to get verified in vscode marketplace, even major publishers like Qt organization are not verified much less so a solo open source developer like myself.

[aaomidi]

I’m Iranian too and our names get people a lot more concerned.

If your name sounded English the implicit bias would make you sound more trust worthy.

[gschizas]

I have high 2 digits of extensions in my VS Code, and yours is the only one that wouldn't have a verified publisher. And I certainly have more than one from solo developers.

Qt organization (because you mentioned it) also has verification. It displays a different message (because I haven't installed anything from them):

> The extension Qt Core is published by Qt Group. This is the first extension you're installing from this publisher.

> Qt Group has verified ownership of qt.io.

> Visual Studio Code has no control over the behavior of third-party extensions, including how they manage your personal data. Proceed only if you trust the publisher.

EDIT: I'm sure there are other extensions that are also by unverified publishers. It was the first time I was hit with that message though.

[SketchySeaBeast]

The burden isn't just when I install it, I need to validate every time it's updated as well. But let's be realistic, the fact that I intrinsically trust extensions published by Microsoft isn't any better.

[4gotunameagain]

> view the source code and package the extension yourself

The problem is that nobody will do that. Even if it were 500 LOC.

And this is why supply chain attacks are on the rise.

[hexomancer]

What are you proposing? Should I not be allowed to develop and publish an extension that I think is useful?

> nobody will do that

"nobody" is a strong word. Yes, most people don't do that, but if a single person reads the source code and finds something nefarious they can report it or leave a review disclosing that and my reputation would be ruined.

[msgodel]

IMO you should avoid installing editor extensions generally. It's better to try to get them merged into the editor itself.

I don't think it's good to constrain people in some way from doing that, you should just have a personal policy of avoiding extensions you're not involved in the development of.

[anuramat]

I thought the entire point of vscode was to be an extensible "lightweight" barebones code editor, as opposed to eg jetbrains stuff; what about vim/emacs then?

[4gotunameagain]

I did not by any means want to discourage you from developing things and sharing them, if anything I thank you for that.

My intention was to highlight that the SW supply chain nowadays is an insecure mess.

Regarding your last point, for the vast majority of open source SW releases, we can never be sure if the release we get is produced from the same code we see. I do not know if that is the case with VScode addons, but you get my point

[hexomancer]

> Regarding your last point, for the vast majority of open source SW releases, we can never be sure if the release we get is produced from the same code we see. I do not know if that is the case with VScode addons, but you get my point

You actually can depackage vscode's .vsix files (it is just a zip file) and compare the package contents to the repository.

[hollerith]

>The problem is that nobody will do that. Even if it were 500 LOC.

I do it with the code I download to extend Emacs.

[norman784]

For the current extension model, I would not trust anyone besides any known org. Even installing themes are potentially dangerous, because of the attack vector.

[SwiftyBug]

Is it possible to make an extension like that for Zed?

[weakfish]

AFAIK not with their current extremely limited API, but it’s on their roadmap to have a more extendable editor.

[norman784]

At this point I opted to just install extension from known ORGs only, like Microsoft, Github, etc and the official extensions from the languages I use. All other extensions, even themes are no more for me.

[nsonha]

When I was a student about 10 years ago there was a custom shell that works like this and even had an extension for sublime, but for the life of me I cannot remember its name.

[Davidbrcz]

So emacs-dired ?

[_Broken_Cloud_]

The idea's cool, but the ui is kinda raw

[hexomancer]

Thanks for the feedback. Can you be a little more specific? What do you mean by "raw"? Do you mean from an aesthetic standpoint or is there some functionality you are missing from the UI?

[weakfish]

Awesome work! I’ll definitely try this out.

[dcreater]

Falling to see why `touch newfile` doesn't accomplish this as fast if not faster and without yet another extension.

[hexomancer]

I doubt this comment was in good faith (you decided to ignore literally all the features I mentioned and focused on just creating files) but I am going to reply anyway:

1. There is no way that `touch newfile` is faster. Using voil, you press a keybind, enter `newfile`, save and you are done. Using touch you have to first, use some keybinding to switch to terminal, then type `touch ` (6 letter overhead) then type the name of the file and then switch back to vscode. I am not saying voil is meaningfully faster, but you saying that `touch newfile` is faster is wild to me.

2. If I am editing a comlpex file name I like having access to all the text editing features that I have in vscode as opposed to the barebones text editing features in the terminal.

3. There is also all the other moving/copying/renaming with visual feedback that you decided to completely ignore.

4. If touch was faster then oil.nvim would not have been such a popular extension. I am sure most vim users know how to use `touch`.

[homebrewer]

If you need complex file manipulation, all of that can be achieved by writing a shell script. That's what I've been doing. You also automatically get access to flow control statements and tools like sed/awk/find.

> all the text editing features that I have in vscode as opposed to the barebones text editing features in the terminal.

VSCode is a very primitive text editor compared to vim, emacs or helix. You don't need to edit the command line right there in the shell prompt, nor do you need to create any files — press Ctrl+X + Ctrl+E and hack away. Save and close the file (ZZ in vim, for example), and it gets executed by the shell.

> then oil.nvim would not have been such a popular extension

Popularity is a bad metric, most people don't bother to learn the tools they're using.

[hexomancer]

> If you need complex file manipulation, all of that can be achieved by writing a shell script. That's what I've been doing. You also automatically get access to flow control statements and tools like sed/awk/find.

Well yes, of course they all "can" be done by writing a shell script, the same way any text editing with vim "can" also be done using ed.

> VSCode is a very primitive text editor compared to vim, emacs or helix. You don't need to edit the command line right there in the shell prompt, nor do you need to create any files — press Ctrl+X + Ctrl+E and hack away. Save and close the file (ZZ in vim, for example), and it gets executed by the shell.

I actually use vscode with the vim extension. You seem to be assuming I am unfamiliar with vim and emacs, I can assure you I know them well enough (at least vim, I also am familiar with the overall features of emacs, though I lack the muscle memory to use it efficiently).

Here is an example: Let's say you have a file named `feature_experimental.cpp` now you want to remove the `_experimental.cpp` from all the files in the current directory which have `_experimental`. I assure you that I can do it faster using voil than you can with vanilla vscode.

[dcreater]

1. There is an inbuilt terminal in VS code. Its almost always active for me and even if it isnt focusing it/bringing it up is the same distance as firing up voil. The benefit here is that it doesnt occupy your editor 2. What complex file names do you need text editing features for? 3. fzf and zoxide covers most of it

I dont want to return the favor of speculate on intent of comment as yours would be petulant and stubborn without focusing on meaningful rebuttal. Im placing this in my comment as based on your other responses there does seem to be a pattern.

[senectus1]

haha yeah this'll never bee a problem with AI plugged into your VSCode :-D

[hexomancer]

Since voil uses its own file extension (.voil) you can easily disable copilot for voil windows.

Also voil asks you to confirm destructive actions. And even if you do, by default voil moves deleted files to a trash location and has undo functionality so you can easily undo your mistakes.

[Etheryte]

In this day and age, this could very well be an up and coming startup. "Hey <LLM>, find all files on my computer that might be a virus and delete them."

[signa11]

hey that's just dired ! https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Di...

[hexomancer]

There was some discussion about dired here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44568404

[signa11]

yup ! thanks i read it all. have been using Emacs for longer than i care to admit.

just like fvwm, there is nothing better than :o) !